Is iiNet's Dallas Buyers Club win an early Christmas present for Aussie pirates?

It's good news for the 4726 anonymous Australians on the piracy naughty list, but the ruling is far from a green light for fans of the BitTorrent channel.

The Federal court has once again rejected demands to identify suspected Dallas Buyers Club pirates, and the judge is ready to throw out the case, but Justice Perram hasn't changed his mind about the legalities of copyright infringement. He's just fed up with the antics of Voltage Pictures – the company which owns the copyright for the Oscar-winning movie.

The judge is ready to throw out the Dallas Buyers Club case but Aussie pirates can't rest easy.

Justice Perram is still happy to force iiNet and other internet service providers to hand over identifying details of people suspected of illegally downloading Dallas Buyers Club, but he wisely doesn't trust Voltage Pictures to play fair. The judge put safeguards in place to stop pirate hunters like Voltage Pictures engaging in bullying tactics like speculative invoicing, and this is what they've been arguing about in court for months.

Stand and deliver

In the United States, some content owners send threatening letters to suspected pirates – demanding they pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines to avoid being dragged through the courts. Justice Perram is concerned that Voltage Pictures will do the same in Australia, as are the Canadian courts which are dealing with Voltage Pictures' efforts to chase down people who pirated The Hurt Locker.

Voltage Pictures wants to scare pirates straight, but Justice Perram insists that it can only ask for the cost of the movie and some out-of-pocket expenses. To ensure the punishment fits the crime, he demanded Voltage Pictures pay a $600,000 bond before receiving the contact details for the 4726 people on its piracy hit list. He also insists on vetoing the wording of the letters sent to these people. Like I said, Perram clearly has trust issues and you can't really blame him.

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Voltage Pictures has been dragging out the case, trying to strike a better deal with Justice Perram, but the judge has finally had enough. Now he's threatening to throw out the case – and force Voltage Pictures to pay iiNet's court costs – if the issue isn't resolved by February 11.

The ball is now in Voltage Pictures' court, it can still have that list of names if it's prepared to abide by Justice Perram's conditions. The judge hasn't ruled in favour of piracy, he's simply ruled against the standover tactics and legal fidgywidgyness favoured by copyright owners.

Three strikes

Going forward, Australia's new three-strikes policy and website blocking regime should be more relevant to the piracy debate than the Dallas Buyers Club ruling. That said the copyright police might still view the Dallas Buyers Club case as a win, as part of a good cop/bad cop long-game. Justice Perram has struck a blow against speculative invoicing but the case helped bring all the parties to the table, finally creating an industry anti-piracy code which is designed to ensure there won't be a repeat of the Dallas Buyers Club shemozzle.

If copyright owners like Voltage Pictures play by the new rules then they won't get caught up in legal battles next time they want to chase down Aussie pirates. Meanwhile pirates won't be able to rely on their ISP coming to their defence, as long as everything is done by the book. This comes as major content providers like Foxtel are preparing to put forward their wish-list of websites they want blocked – with The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents surely at the top even though BitTorrent is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to online file-sharing.

Out of sight

The judge hasn't ruled in favour of piracy, he's simply ruled against the standover tactics and legal fidgywidgyness favoured by copyright owners.

The situation certainly looks like a win for copyright holders, except for the fact that it's child's play to beat anti-piracy efforts and hide file-sharing traffic using a Virtual Private Network and other tricks.

The new regime won't stamp out piracy, it will just drive it underground – allowing the government to claim victory when piracy levels appear to drop because pirates have cloaked their activities in encryption. Pirates have had plenty of time to prepare.

It's tough to crack down on VPNs when they have so many legitimate business uses, but it will be interesting to see if the copyright lobby throws its support behind efforts to weaken encryption in the fight against terrorism. It wouldn't be the first time copyright lobbyists have encouraged a McCarthy-style witch hunt.

The most effective weapon against piracy is to offer people timely access to content at a fair price. This argument is supported by the fact that Netflix traffic dwarfs BitTorrent traffic, even though you could download everything that's on Netflix for free from The Pirate Bay.

Australia's piracy crackdown is a futile gesture designed to appease the powerful copyright lobby, because it's easier for the government to drive pirates underground rather than stand up to Hollywood and demand Australians be given a better deal this Christmas.